Looking for an uncommon take on small-town life? While the autumnal mountain village depicted in Misericordia could sometimes be mistaken for Vermont, you’ll find no folksy stereotypes in this movie that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was named the top film of 2024 by Cahiers du Cinéma.
Writer-director Alain Guiraudie made waves in France’s gay cinema with 2013’s Stranger by the Lake. See his new noir-ish effort at a Vermont International Film Foundation screening on Friday, April 18, 7 p.m., at Main Street Landing Film House in Burlington. And be sure to put the organization’s upcoming Made Here Film Festival (April 24 to 27 at Burlington Beer) on your calendar.
The deal
Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) drives from Toulouse to his rural hometown for the funeral of the local baker. The bereaved widow, Martine (Catherine Frot), welcomes the younger man’s company and asks him to stay on and consider taking over the ailing bakery. Noticing Jérémie’s fascination with a swimsuit photo of her late husband, she calmly inquires if he was in love with her spouse and gives him some of the man’s clothes to wear.
Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), Martine’s hotheaded son and Jérémie’s former schoolmate, finds the whole situation creepy. Accusing Jérémie of having designs on his mom, he demands the guest leave town.
After the tension between the two men comes to a head, the rest of the village gets involved, including a mushroom-foraging priest (Jacques Develay), a misanthropic farmer (David Ayala), and two deadpan cops (Sébastien Faglain and Salomé Lopes). Misericordia or mercy (miséricorde in French) may be a church-approved virtue, but just how far can sympathy for sinners extend?
Will you like it?
From the opening credits of Misericordia, we know we’re in good hands. Guiraudie puts us in Jérémie’s point of view as he drives back home, the burnished hills of the director’s native Aveyron unfolding before him. Marc Verdaguer’s subtly sinister score promises the kind of grounded intrigue we expect from classic noir.
When our protagonist arrives at his destination, the music is replaced by a naturalistic soundscape: the seething of insects, the whine of distant machinery. The spare dialogue forces us to deduce the characters’ relationships and motivations for ourselves. Jérémie seems to float through life, his expression guarded and his intentions hidden behind hooded eyes. We follow him with equal interest and trepidation because it’s never clear what he might do next.
To the extent that Misericordia is a thriller, it’s not for genre fans who crave big performances, floridly evil villains or elaborate set pieces. This film does have moments reminiscent of No Country for Old Men, including a what-is-the-world-coming-to monologue and one scene of shocking violence. But its overall mood is mellower and more improvisational, if you will. Halfway through, you may find yourself realizing that it’s actually a comedy, albeit not a lighthearted one.
Kysyl’s physical presence and ambiguous affect might remind Anglosphere viewers of Irish actor Barry Keoghan, especially his performance in Saltburn as an omnisexual young man who invades a weird little social bubble with an agenda of seduction. But Jérémie is an even more mysterious figure. Guiraudie’s screenplay (based on his own novel) keeps us wondering whether this semi-outsider has any control of the narratives he’s entered. In a recurring gag, Jérémie can’t seem to roam the woods without running into the villagers, who also disrupt his slumber in increasingly invasive ways.
Guiraudie has sly methods of conveying just how small a small town can feel. The vibrant 35mm cinematography of Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) turns the countryside itself into a character, capturing the autumn forest in such deep focus that we might imagine we can spot the priest’s prized porcini and morels. No mere bucolic backdrop, these are the woods of folktales, where a seemingly innocent drink or wrestling match with an old friend might suddenly take a dark turn.
One of the most refreshing aspects of Misericordia is its approach to romantic and sexual desire: Anyone in the story might be into anyone else, regardless of age, gender or degree of conventional attractiveness. While this is no fantasy version of small-town life (homophobia still exists), the characters discuss their loves and lusts with admirable matter-of-factness, as if self-consciousness and labels were fancy urban inventions.
Misericordia may not be as floridly outrageous as its glossier cousin, Saltburn, but its earthy realism and refusal to meet genre expectations are arguably more subversive. I look forward to the befuddlement when TikTok teens eventually discover it.
If you like this, try…
Stranger by the Lake (2013; Kanopy, Strand Releasing, rentable): Guiraudie won the Queer Palm at Cannes for this sort-of thriller about a man cruising by a lake who has dark suspicions about his new hookup. The film received attention for integrating realistic sex scenes into the story — in contrast to Misericordia, which features no on-screen intimacy.
“Ripley” (2024; Netflix): This gorgeously shot new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic grifter tale The Talented Mr. Ripley has a vibe similar to Misericordia, contrasting the stunning Italian settings to the grubby smallness of the protagonist’s struggle to get away with a single crime.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022; fuboTV, rentable): While Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-nominated dark comedy is more theatrical and heavily scripted than Misericordia, it taps a similar vein of small-town oddness, with Catholic guilt for flavor (each features a pivotal scene in a confessional).
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!